Final water profile after using CRS and DLS

[simmyb]

Recently, I have been using CRS and DLS to treat my water. CLS to reduce alkalinity and DRS to increase Calcium, both in quantities recommended by Brupaks.

Having started to play around with water calculators I thought I would work out the effect on the other Ions in the water. Thanks to chastuck for the DLS figures...

My last beer was a pale ale. I used CLS to reduce alkalinity from 210ppm down to about 30ppm. This used 0.96ml/l of CRS. I then added DLS in the grist and boil kettle to increase the Calcium from 83 ppm to 200 ppm as per brupaks recommendation , which took 0.65g/l. The mash pH was good (as far as I can tell, still using pH papers, but looked in the right area...).

Looking at the other salts, I calculated that this added:

Magnesium 3.56ppm added. 15.86ppm Total.
Sodium 48.75ppm added. 84.45ppm Total
Chloride 162.3ppm added. 209.7ppm Total.
Sulphate 305.62ppm added. 361.42ppm Total.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but those seem like big numbers! My concern is that those quantities are getting in the way of flavours rather than assisting them? What do you reckon??

As for the beer, it has been in the bottle for a week so too early to check, but it cleared well and carbonated well and for all I know tastes great. But when comparing my beers to other commercial beers side by side, the flavours seem a little muted.

I plan to use Phosphoric to reduce alkalinity in my next brew and keep the Ions controlled with other additions to see how that works for me.

Cheers, Simon

[mabrungard]

Simon, the move to phosphoric is prudent. While several of those ion totals are OK, the chloride is pretty high. I find that the combination of high chloride and high sulfate is a recipe for minerally beer. That minerally character can overwhelm the taste of the beer and push the malt and hop components to the back seat. Don't let the water over step it's place.

Be aware that English breweries did not typically mineralize their brewing liquor to a high degree in the past and probably don't now. In some locales, the tap water has enough mineralization to suffice for making tasty beer. The main deficiency in those places is the alkalinity. In the ancient days, pre-boiling could be an answer to reducing alkalinity. In the 1800's, breweries figured out how to employ acid to neutralize excess alkalinity and that even spawned a lawsuit in Burton regarding adulterating beer.

So I recommend that an approach you should consider is to reduce your reliance on those prepackaged salts and acids and move to adding ONLY the ions that you really want in your beer via individual minerals and acids. You own Bru'n Water and I hope you will consider trying those less mineralized water profiles in Bru'n Water as starting points for beers that rely less on hoppiness and bitterness. For hoppy and bitter beers, the pale ale profile works well. The key to its success is the low chloride in conjunction with high sulfate. You will notice that this is also the case for the Burton profile (do stay away from the Burton profile since its too extreme for good brewing results).

Enjoy!

[vacant]

You are an ideal candidate for an "RO" brew.

Take your boiler to a local aquarist and ask them to fill it with 35L of reverse osmosis water. Expect to pay about 10p/litre. I can get mine from the tropical fish department of our garden centre.

This is essentially distilled water so you can use the exact salt additions to produce whatever profile you want. I'm in a high alk area (~230), when I used RO water for a pale beer I got one of my best results. Once you've done that experiment you can see what, if any, improvement it offers over your tap water with your current treatment. If the improvement is huge, try half RO/half tap or include some bottled water. If you're not impressed with your RO brew, look elsewhere to eliminate your muted flavour.

[Eric]

CRS and DLS when used with highly alkaline water will place a severe restriction on your liquor's profile. HOWEVER, if the result isn't a great beer, including those in catagories outside your preference, the cause is your process which can't be corrected by water treatment that increases phosphate content, changes ratio of anions or reduces the quantity of cations.
Good luck with your project, just be careful how you make conclusions, but make due allowance for vested interests.
Before you criticise a comparison of your own beer with a commercial one, do you know what your beer through a hand pump is like?

Should I bet Martin doesn't?